Austral Re: a solution provider to LatAm
Is there any specific news you’d like to give us ahead of the FIDES conference?
Austral Re is glad to sponsor such an important event and especially this one that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, where we have our head office and have started our operations.
Our team is looking forward to meeting some of our most important clients and partners and discussing new business opportunities and challenges in the region.
What’s top of the agenda for Austral Re in Latin America, and where do you see opportunities?
As a regional and multiline reinsurer operating in 18 countries, we see opportunities in the property and casualty (P&C) business, and we have also made important investments in P&C/life and in surety products and team.
For life reinsurance, we developed and launched an online underwriting platform that will enable our clients to do more accurate underwriting, using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
For surety business, we have hired a specialised underwriter based in Buenos Aires, to develop business across the region.
We believe that one of our great assets is the ability to respond the need of our clients, and also to help them to develop new products.
What are the main challenges you’re seeing in the region?
For us to continue growing our business in a sustainable and profitable way, it’s very important to balance our portfolio between catastrophe and non-catastrophe business, and also in different lines.
We monitor closely the trends of the market. Cat capacity has become more expensive and selective. With that in mind, we developed important tools to measure our exposures, and have a very skilled team for cat modelling and analytics.
We are monitoring our exposures in non-modelled risks, such as floods in Brazil that have been a current concern for the market in the past few years.
You secured a ratings upgrade from AM Best this year—what will this mean for the business?
As we all know, credit ratings can open and shut doors in the reinsurance market.
We have invested in the last years not only in our underwriting and pricing processes but also in our governance. The upgrade to “A-” by AM Best was a very important step that allows us to keep growing and strengthen our business, not only in the region but also with existing clients and countries.
You have completed a couple of acquisitions in the region in recent years. How are these working out, and are there more in the pipeline?
We are always alert for good opportunities in the market, and the acquisition of Terra Brasis and Markel Brasil has complemented our existing portfolio and increased our capital. It was very important in implementing our strategy of growing in the region, with the opening of our office in Bogotá that handles the business outside Brazil.
With your footprint in the region, where in Latin America do you expect most growth in over the next five years?
We have been growing in all the 18 countries where we operate. In Mexico, for example, we grew over 70%, helped by the increase of our rating.
The line of business where we see more opportunities outside Brazil is surety and property and the main country for growth should be Mexico. It is the largest reinsurance market in LatAm and for Austral it is our fourth market.
In Brazil, we already have an important participation in the market but we see space to grow in life and P&C business.
Are there any other plans or news you can share with us?
In a market where we see some reinsurers reducing their appetite for LatAm and for reinsurance, we are still seeing several opportunities and are keen to grow in our core business, which is traditional life and non-life reinsurance in the region.
We are here to stay and to support this market. We are investing a lot in our people, data analytics, capital modelling and in new products and services to our clients and are working to be a solutions provider to them.
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